A child-resistant package is designed to reduce the ease with which children are able to access the contents stored within the package. A pill bottle or similar molded plastic container having a neck, for example, may be rendered child resistant through the usage of a specialized cap, which is attachable to the container neck. Jointly, the container neck and the cap form a child-resistant cap assembly, which requires the performance of certain actions to detach the cap from the container neck. The cap and container neck may engage along a threaded interface, in which case cap removal may be prevented by obstructing rotation of the cap relative to the container neck in some manner. For example, in one common design, the cap is molded to include flexible tabs located about the periphery of the cap. Cap rotation relative to the container neck is obstructed unless the tabs are depressed inwardly by an adult user, while the user simultaneously turns the cap in the appropriate direction. In another common design, removal of a threaded cap is prevented unless the cap is turned in the correct direction, while pressed downwardly toward the container body. In other instances, a child-resistant cap assembly may lack a threaded interface between the cap and container neck, in which case cap removal may be restricted utilizing a different approach. For example, in this latter case, the cap assembly may be designed such that cap removal is possible only after rotation of the non-threaded cap to a particular angular position or clocking relative to the container body.
While often relatively non-complex in a structural sense, child-resistant cap assemblies can be deceptively difficult to design. An inexorable tradeoff is encountered in designing a child-resistant cap assembly that the vast majority of adults (including the elderly and those with disabilities) find intuitive and relatively non-cumbersome to use, while most children find prohibitively difficult to open. Relatively few, if any conventional child-resistant cap assemblies strike an ideal balance between these competing factors. There thus exists an ongoing demand for child-resistant cap assemblies providing enhanced child deterrence characteristics, while further maintaining or improving adult ease-of-use. Concurrently, it would be desirable for such child-resistant cap assemblies to be amenable to cost effective manufacture and, perhaps, capable of relatively seamless incorporation into legacy product lines and manufacturing practices.